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Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16423, 25 April 1919, Page 2

According to the cablegrams. President 'Wilson says tliat it is impossible for Italy to have Fiurae. Many people will ask what concern President Wilson has in the matter. The answer to this is that the President, like all of us, is deeply intereoted in preventing, as far ns may be, the present settlement leaving behind it the seeds of future conflicts. Italy desires to dominate the Adriatic so as to make her own coasts safe from attack, and with this object she wishes to gain possession, not only of Trictso, Pola, and Fiumo at the head of the Adriatic, hut also of the coast of Dalmatia on the eastern side of the narrow sea. Italy is to have Trieste and Pola, but it is certainly most undesirable that she should have cither Flume or the Dalmatian coast. Fiumo hitherto has been the only port of Hungary and should naturally fall either to the Jugo-Slavs or to an enlarged Serbia, and the same is true of Dalmatia. There are some Italians in Fiumo and also on the eastern Adriatic coast, but they aro not a majority of the population, and to give these districts to Italy would prevent the now States to be formed from Hungary and Serbia having any direct outlet to the sen. In the case of Poland a narrow strip of territory down the Vistula Valley has been taken from Germany to give Poland a port; on the Baltic, and it seems absurd to give concessions to Italy which will enable her to dominate the trade of her neighbours, thus giving rise to subjects of dispute in the immediate future. So far as Fiume is concerned, President Wilson appears to be in the right, though how far he can make his opinion prevail without causing a breach wit(i Italy it is not possible .to say.